


Sing Up the Storm

by LittleRaven



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Fairy Tale Style, Femslash, Little Mermaid Elements, Mermaids, Witches, fairy tale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:49:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27980289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleRaven/pseuds/LittleRaven
Summary: In the land swayed by currents stronger than those of rivers, and far deeper below them too, where all was water, there lived a mermaid.
Relationships: Mermaid/Witch (Original Work), Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8
Collections: Mistletoe Exchange 2020





	Sing Up the Storm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vendettadays](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vendettadays/gifts).



In the land swayed by currents stronger than those of rivers, and far deeper below them too, where all was water, there lived a mermaid. She was green in many shades, from the light, almost translucent green of waves near the shore to the dark green of a palm tree's leaves. Her hair tangled like algae around her; if someone ever happened to see her swimming near the surface, it was the first thing they would see, and unless their eyes were very good, or she sang, they would miss the flash of sun or moon the edges of her tail fins as she moved through the waters, passing the ship by. 

Whether she was seen and heard or not was of no concern. The mermaid would propel herself with her tail, or let herself be carried by the currents, rejoicing in their pull, in the underwater light, in the contrast between the air and the water when her hair and back emerged from the sea. Sometimes she turned over and floated, so that the light would warm her face directly during the day, or to look at the moon and stars spread out in almost a silver net across the sky during the night. 

One night the sky was moonless, and starless. The only light was that which wove through the dark clouds, faster than any current. She swam under it, flipped over, delighted in the way the shine seemed to sparked off the waves only to disappear again and again, until the water grew so troubled that she lost all power over where its currents would take her, and she was dragged to and fro, under and over the surface, knocked around by the wind till she could scarcely breathe. Her tangled hair wrapped around her face. There was little now to differentiate between the water below and the air above, and all was dark save for the weaving of that intermittent light, and the sounds from the sky were greater than any she had heard before. 

In this way she was taken by the storm, until its rhythms slowed and she floated once more under a softly glowing moon. She did not know if she had slept or remained awake, but she had not rested. The mermaid looked up, unaware of where the currents had swept her to and unable to swim even if it had been otherwise. Water alone moved her. She turned her cheek to lay it on the surface, her hair sticking to the side of her face still exposed to the air, and began to recover. The mermaid slept. 

The very next thing she noticed, once she was capable of noticing anything, was a pair of small silver moons. She blinked, and the moons vanished. Something black brushed her face. The mermaid gathered her strength at last, and flipped herself over, curious. What she had seen was not another sky but the silvery eyes of someone who looked to be like her. Except the color of those eyes, and, she realized, more. Her hair and skin were pure black and brown; black as the obsidian stone she sometimes found where mountains rose from the seabed, brown as the dark wood of a shipwreck. Her shape called to mind the beings she had seen on ships when they were not being sunk under waves, and she would take them in at her leisure while floating nearby. No, she was not like her, and so the mermaid forgot to take in anything else for a time. 

She swam forward, and her hands met stone instead of water. Her tail moved without aim. Of course. The woman was standing above, as her kind could not do on the sea without something else under them, and she was very close. Her feet were bare in the water that lapped at stone steps a little higher than where the mermaids hands rested. She still looked down, as caught as the mermaid. 

“I will hide you,” the woman told the mermaid. “I have never known one like you, except in stories. You should not be seen unless it is from far away on the sea, where none can reach you.”

The mermaid was tired, and not being used to the company of humans, glad to heed the advice of one on how to deal with the rest. She was asked for, and gave, a long lock of her algae-like hair. With it, the witch—for so she told the mermaid, “You may know me; a witch and a mermaid both must live apart from humans, and thus understand each other’s company”—drew upon the stone with her fingers. “Water carries magic. If you must be near land, come here, and the sea will carry the magic in the stone steps around you when the waves pull back.” 

As she did not know where she was, and in any case had never had a desire to approach land, the mermaid found it easy to stay by the stone steps instead of recovering on any other part of the shore. Too, she was intrigued by the witch. She was used to having no company at all, and had never heard of such a thing, let alone thought that one might know of her. 

The witch sung her stories, then, weaving patterns like the ones made by the stars, giving meaning to the ships at sea and the ones below, the songs she had heard from them without understanding—though she knew music was a pattern too. “Like magic talks to the stone,” the witch said, “our music tells us things we might not know, or that we do know, to help us remember them.” 

“That is fitting, for there seem to be many of you to remember. Mine is only to please myself.” It had never before occurred to the mermaid that she could be lonely, and she could not name the feeling, but it seemed to her that she was. The witch’s stories had a warmth to them, like when she swam through the sunlit waters of the sea’s surface, only it was farther away. 

She wondered if it was the same for the witch, who spoke of this and yet said she lived apart. Did the witch share this new feeling? Had she known it for longer than the mermaid? Perhaps she was right, the mermaid thought, watching those silver eyes, when she said we must understand one another. She sang for the witch, not to show her what she’d said, but to show her what she felt. 

“For you, then, it is that. But we hear it, and tell of it, and it becomes part of our own.” The witch watched her back.

“I am glad that you know of me,” the mermaid said, “though I had never before seen why I should be known. Thank you for remembering me.”

“I ask only that you remember me, once you return to the wide waters. It would be something, to be remembered by a mermaid.”

The mermaid promised to grant her this at once, and sure enough, when she was strong enough to face the powerful currents, she never sang without thinking of the witch, without weaving her into every melody, so that all sailors who heard her wept, and the sea creatures, who could not weep for being in the sea, stilled to hear. 

One night, she sang and sang until her own tears seemed almost possible, and then for the first time, she heard another mermaid singing back. The mermaid stopped. 

The other singing continued, insistent. She sang again, and as their voices joined, she understood who it was. The witch appeared, now with a tail of her own, as black as her hair. Around her throat was wrapped the lock of the mermaid’s green algae-like hair. 

“It seemed to me,” said the witch, “that to live with a mermaid would really be something. And if a witch and a mermaid understand each other, so much the better if the witch is also a mermaid.”

So they sang, not caring who heard or saw them but each other, and to this day a passing ship, or a witch who knows how to talk to the water, can still find out about them.


End file.
